After the First Dealth

Terrorism is the usage of violence or mass destruction to gain political or religious ends. In the novel After the First Death the author Robert Cormier attempts to shape our response to terrorism. Cormier uses, characters as a tool, to shape the reader’s response towards terrorism. Cormier does this through fully laying out the characters’ emotions, thoughts, beliefs and the usuage of the plot.

Since everybody show some emotion to something, emotions is something every reader can relate to. Robert Cormier uses the emotions of Miro, Kate and the children to shape the readers response towards terrorism. Miro is a young boy who is about to kill his first victim. The reader’s response to this would be a sense of anger because killing is against our values and moral beliefs. Cormier manipulates the reader to feel a certain way about Miro. Cormier explained to the reader, in detail, what happened throughout Miro’s life, and how he grew up. Knowing his circumstances the reader now feels sympathetic towards Miro, instead of feeling hatred towards him. This is due to Cormier using the manipulation of emotions. This shows that in terrorism, the terrorists usually had big problems growing up.

Kate was going to be Miro’s first victim. Readers normally feel remorse towards victims. Again Cormier attempts to manipulate these responses. He makes the reader see Kate rather annoying, because she does not believe in herself. This makes the reader feel frustrated with Kate, because she can not make a proper decision and keep asking questions to herself and leaving them unanswered. “One question remained. Could she take that chance? Could she actually try to drive the bus out of here? Could she ever be that brave?” The fact that Cormier manipulated the reader to see Kate as kind of annoying made the reader not feel as sympathetic towards her when she died in the end. She kept on trying to lie to Miro and this again frustrates the reader. Cormier shapes the reader’s response towards Kate and in the process makes the reader understand the victim’s situation during a terrorist attack.

Cormier uses the thoughts of the characters to try and shape the readers response to terrorism. For example Cormier presents a character Ben, to feel nothing towards death and ends up committing suicide. The reader’s response towards suicide should be that suicide is wrong and it’s the easy way out. The fact that Cormier manipulated the readers mind to feel that Ben’s death isn’t such a big deal, made the reader feel less sympathetic towards Ben. He does this by not involving Ben’s family too much and by not showing their feelings after his death.

Cormier also uses Artkin’s thoughts to shape the readers response to terrorism. Artkin is the terrorist who planned the whole hijacking. Artkin has absolutely no respect for life and thinks people’s lives are irrelevant in comparison to what he want to achieve by his terrorist attacks. For example he says “Do not seek to own anything, do not try and make anything belong to you, do not look for pleasure in anything. It will be taken from you sooner or later just as you must take from other people.” This gives the reader the impression that Artkin has no ambition or goals for himself in life, but to kill others. He basically has no life; he doesn’t have loved ones or anyone he cares about. This makes the reader disabled to relate to his situation. In essence the reader feels hatred and disinterest towards him.

Cormier also uses the plot of “After the First Death”